Board of Elections employee testifies he was following his boss's orders

By Andrew Beam

Saturday, December 8, 2012

TROY -- Rensselaer County Board of Elections employee Kevin O'Malley finished up his testimony on Friday in the trial of BOE Democratic Commissioner Edward McDonough, and defense attorney Brian Premo tried to figure out exactly what he knew.

Much of Premo's cross-examination focused on emails sent to O'Malley before he testified in front of the grand jury a second time around as issues arose regarding him perjuring himself. There was also the issue over how many applications O'Malley had falsely filled out as the number was originally three and soon became more as investigators were able to detect his all upper case writing style on more applications.

The jury was then brought back to the scene where McDonough, who is charged with 73 felonies for allegedly forging election documents as well as possessing them, and former City Councilman John Brown, who pled guilty to one felony last year in connection with the case.

O'Malley said he was called into McDonough's office where he said he saw Brown but didn't interact with him much because Brown was on his cell phone most of the time. According to O'Malley, McDonough asked him to make up excuses for voters on their absentee ballot applications, something O'Malley said he didn't realize was wrong until afterwards. He added he figured an operative had forgotten to enter in the excuses.

"When a boss tells you to do something, you usually do it," O'Malley responded.

"Really?" Premo said. "If your boss asks you to commit a bank robbery, do you usually do it?"

"No," O'Malley said.

During cross-examination, O'Malley also admitted to destroying BOE documents in May 2011 he said were out of date when it was learned investigators would be looking through documents. He said he was not aware some of them could have been linked to 2007 forgeries.

Mary Ellen LaPlante, a former BOE worker for the Democrats, also took the stand on Friday where she mainly discussed the absentee ballots process from requesting and getting application to the actual ballot itself.

She said if an application was incomplete then a call would be made to the voter to acquire the necessary information. She said workers would then fill out the information if given information from the voter.

"What if you were not able to speak to the voter," Smith asked LaPlante.

"Then the application could not be processed," LaPlante said.

During cross-examination, Premo asked LaPlante how busy the Board of Elections gets the day before an election. LaPlante admitted it would get very busy and added everyone would touch the absentee ballot envelopes, including McDonough.

Also taking the stand on Friday were voters Jermaine Joseph and Donell Patterson, both who were football players and roommates when attending Hudson Valley Community College in 2009. Both testified a tall, bald, white man approached them at their apartment asking them to register to vote in the Working Families Party. They were given $10 to "go buy food at the store," according to the two, but said they didn't feel like it was meant to coerce them into registering.